Saturday, September 24, 2011

BEIJING — Rioters in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong havebesieged government buildings, attacked police officers and overturnedSWAT team vehicles during protests this week against the seizure offarmland, said officials in Shanwei, a city that skirts the South ChinaSea not far from Hong Kong.

Lufeng residents have long engaged in a battle over land.

According to a government Web site, hundreds of people on Wednesdayblocked an important highway while others mobbed the local headquarters ofthe Communist Party and a police station in the city of Lufeng, injuring adozen officers. Some witnesses, posting anonymous accounts online, put thenumber of rioters at more than 1,000.

The protests continued Friday, with farmers gathered in front of agovernment building banging gongs and holding aloft signs that said “Giveus back our farmland” and “Let us continue farming,” Reuters reported.

The authorities say the violence escalated Thursday after rumors spreadthat the police had killed a girl. At least four people were arrested,including a man officials accused of instigating the crowd.

The violence was the latest outbreak of civil unrest in China fueled bypopular discontent over industrial pollution, police misconduct or illegalland grabs that leave peasants with little or no compensation. Such “massincidents,” as the government calls them, have been steadily increasing inrecent years, providing party leaders with worrisome proof that officialmalfeasance combined with a dysfunctional judiciary often has combustibleresults.

Last week, hundreds of residents protesting environmental contamination bya solar panel factory in Zhejiang Province stormed the factory anddestroyed office equipment and vehicles. Weeks earlier, 12,000 peoplepeacefully gathered in the city of Dalian to demand the closure of achemical factory.

In Lufeng, the protests were just the most dramatic manifestation of along-running battle over land that residents say their ancestors reclaimedfrom the sea. According to a local Web site, the Lufeng city governmenthas already sold off more than 800 acres of the property for industrialparks and high-priced housing. The proffered compensation per acre,villagers said, has been barely enough to buy a new bed.

“Wake up, my neighbors, if we don’t unite now, the land of our ancestorswill be sold off to the last square meter! If we don’t unite now, ourchildren will be homeless!” read one posting on the site.

“We will have no where to bury our parents or raise our children!”

Municipal governments, which own all land in China, largely depend onsales of long-term property leases to fill their operating budgets. Inmany cases, private real estate companies collude with officials to clearand develop the land as quickly as possible.

The latest seized plots were sold to a developer for about $156 million,according to The South China Morning Post, which first reported the saleand seizure. According to the company’s Web site, the complex is to becalled “Country Garden” after the name of the developer.

“To shape a prosperous future through our conscience and socialresponsibility,” is one of the company’s mottoes.

News of the demonstrations and photos and videos were quickly deleted fromthe Web by censors, but a few images persisted Friday. In one,demonstrators carried a banner that read “Give back my ancestors’farmland.” A video lingered on overturned police vehicles, including onewith graffiti that read “running dogs,” an insult once directed atperceived enemies of the people.

The continuing unrest could pose a threat to the political aspirations ofWang Yang, the provincial party secretary who has partly staked hisreputation on promoting the well-being of Guangdong’s 104 millionresidents and by trying to gauge the level of their happiness.

“Happiness for the people is like flowers,” Mr. Wang wrote this year. “Theparty and the government shall create the proper environment for theflowers to grow.”

The province is China’s most populous and a manufacturing powerhouse thatproduces roughly one third of the country’s exports.

Break the Chains.info

is a news and discussion forum for supporters of political prisoners, prisoners of war, politicized social prisoners, and victims of police and state intimidation.

This blog is organized and updated autonomously of the disbanded Break the Chains Prisoner Support Network formerly based in Eugene, Oregon. While this online project shares several of the same concerns as the old Break the Chains collective, no formal organization exists behind the current web presence.

"I will never surrender my pride and dignity nor allow the system to 'cut my tongue' and I will always, without fear, speak out against these war crimes and crimes against humanity, no matter if I spend the rest of my life in a prison cage, and draw my last breath of air laying down in this steel bed surrounded by razor-wire fences and cages, and its prison policies that are designed to destroy one's humanity…."